FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 674(Democrats in roman; Republicans in italic; Independents underlined) H R 3997 RECORDED VOTE 29-Sep-2008 2:07 PM QUESTION: On Concurring in Senate Amendment With An Amendment
BILL TITLE: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance andtax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers,and for other purposes
Monday, September 29, 2008
Time Magazine Article worth reading today...
DOW INDEX down - 777 or 7% today.
America's No. 1 Export: Debt
By Justin Fox
Japan and Germany make cars. Saudi Arabia pumps oil. China supplies the world with socks and toys and flat-screen TVs. What does the United States produce? Lots of stuff, but in recent years this country's No. 1 export--by far--has been debt.
When you look at things this way, it becomes clearer what the frenzy in New York City and Washington is all about. There are major quality issues with our nation's flagship product. The authorities have acknowledged the problem--"This is a humbling, humbling time for the United States of America" is how Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson put it in one TV interview. So now Paulson & Co. are recalling defective financial products en masse, slapping GUARANTEED BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT labels on some of them and replacing others outright with U.S. treasuries.
It's textbook crisis management, similar to Johnson & Johnson's famously forthright and successful reaction to the Tylenol tampering scare of 1982. So far, so good. But while Johnson & Johnson was soon able to restore Tylenol's lost market share, the U.S. faces a different challenge.
Our quandary is that we are apparently not capable of safely manufacturing $700 billion in debt securities to sell to foreigners every year, as we've been doing since 2005. (That this is the same total as Treasury's bailout plan is just a coincidence.) If we keep trying to borrow that much from overseas--as you've probably gathered, selling debt means borrowing money--today's quality problems may soon seem petty. For now, we can still reassure buyers around the world by slapping that GUARANTEED label on our debt. But as financial crisis and economic slowdown cause government debts to burgeon, and as commitments to Social Security and Medicare loom closer as baby boomers retire, that confidence could easily fade.
So while today's crisis management makes a certain amount of sense, returning to the borrow-and-spend status quo afterward seems like a disastrous idea. If the U.S. is to have a future as an economic power, its long love affair with borrowed money has to end. Right? "I hesitate to say yes, because people--including me--have been saying that it had to come to an end now for years, and it hasn't," says R. Taggart Murphy, an expert on global capital flows who teaches at the University of Tsukuba's business school in Tokyo. Then he adds, "It looks pretty clearly like we're in the endgame right now."
This country's move into big-time debt exports began with the big-time government deficits of the early 1980s--which had to be financed by somebody. "The Reagan Revolution was essentially an experiment in seeing how much money America could borrow from overseas," says Murphy, who at the time was an investment banker in Tokyo. The answer was lots. Guided by Murphy and his ilk, Japan snapped up U.S. treasuries and other debt, keeping interest rates here from exploding as many had feared.
In the early 1990s, as the U.S. got its fiscal house in order, the capital inflows from overseas shrank. Late in the decade, they returned, with a twist: foreign investors and companies were buying into corporate America to get in on an economic boom. That boom ended in 2001. But the Bush Administration soon began running deficits, and foreigners discovered an American financial product to which they'd never paid much heed before: mortgage securities.
The result was a staggering increase in capital inflows. The inevitable flip side was a staggering rise in the current account deficit--basically, the trade deficit plus a few other things. It grew from $114 billion in 1995 to $417 billion in 2000 to a record $788 billion in 2006 before falling to $731 billion, or 5% of GDP, last year. Political discussion of this shortfall usually focuses on trade agreements and exchange rates. But if the U.S. simply stopped borrowing so much--that is, if Washington balanced its budget and restrained financial companies from loading U.S. households with ever more debt--the current account deficit would evaporate.
The housing crash and resulting credit crunch are already forcing U.S. households to retrench. Government--fearing disaster if everybody retrenches at the same time--has stepped into the breach. Again, that makes sense in a crisis. But once the panic has passed, the U.S. will simply be steering toward another, even bigger, crisis unless it finds something to replace debt as its No. 1 export.
Of course, less money borrowed means less money to spend. "Can you imagine McCain or Obama going around saying he wants to reduce your standard of living?" asks Murphy. Probably not. But maybe they could just sell it as, say, diversifying our product offering.
Extra Money To read Justin Fox's daily take on business and the economy, go to time.com/curiouscapitalist
America's No. 1 Export: Debt
By Justin Fox
Japan and Germany make cars. Saudi Arabia pumps oil. China supplies the world with socks and toys and flat-screen TVs. What does the United States produce? Lots of stuff, but in recent years this country's No. 1 export--by far--has been debt.
When you look at things this way, it becomes clearer what the frenzy in New York City and Washington is all about. There are major quality issues with our nation's flagship product. The authorities have acknowledged the problem--"This is a humbling, humbling time for the United States of America" is how Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson put it in one TV interview. So now Paulson & Co. are recalling defective financial products en masse, slapping GUARANTEED BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT labels on some of them and replacing others outright with U.S. treasuries.
It's textbook crisis management, similar to Johnson & Johnson's famously forthright and successful reaction to the Tylenol tampering scare of 1982. So far, so good. But while Johnson & Johnson was soon able to restore Tylenol's lost market share, the U.S. faces a different challenge.
Our quandary is that we are apparently not capable of safely manufacturing $700 billion in debt securities to sell to foreigners every year, as we've been doing since 2005. (That this is the same total as Treasury's bailout plan is just a coincidence.) If we keep trying to borrow that much from overseas--as you've probably gathered, selling debt means borrowing money--today's quality problems may soon seem petty. For now, we can still reassure buyers around the world by slapping that GUARANTEED label on our debt. But as financial crisis and economic slowdown cause government debts to burgeon, and as commitments to Social Security and Medicare loom closer as baby boomers retire, that confidence could easily fade.
So while today's crisis management makes a certain amount of sense, returning to the borrow-and-spend status quo afterward seems like a disastrous idea. If the U.S. is to have a future as an economic power, its long love affair with borrowed money has to end. Right? "I hesitate to say yes, because people--including me--have been saying that it had to come to an end now for years, and it hasn't," says R. Taggart Murphy, an expert on global capital flows who teaches at the University of Tsukuba's business school in Tokyo. Then he adds, "It looks pretty clearly like we're in the endgame right now."
This country's move into big-time debt exports began with the big-time government deficits of the early 1980s--which had to be financed by somebody. "The Reagan Revolution was essentially an experiment in seeing how much money America could borrow from overseas," says Murphy, who at the time was an investment banker in Tokyo. The answer was lots. Guided by Murphy and his ilk, Japan snapped up U.S. treasuries and other debt, keeping interest rates here from exploding as many had feared.
In the early 1990s, as the U.S. got its fiscal house in order, the capital inflows from overseas shrank. Late in the decade, they returned, with a twist: foreign investors and companies were buying into corporate America to get in on an economic boom. That boom ended in 2001. But the Bush Administration soon began running deficits, and foreigners discovered an American financial product to which they'd never paid much heed before: mortgage securities.
The result was a staggering increase in capital inflows. The inevitable flip side was a staggering rise in the current account deficit--basically, the trade deficit plus a few other things. It grew from $114 billion in 1995 to $417 billion in 2000 to a record $788 billion in 2006 before falling to $731 billion, or 5% of GDP, last year. Political discussion of this shortfall usually focuses on trade agreements and exchange rates. But if the U.S. simply stopped borrowing so much--that is, if Washington balanced its budget and restrained financial companies from loading U.S. households with ever more debt--the current account deficit would evaporate.
The housing crash and resulting credit crunch are already forcing U.S. households to retrench. Government--fearing disaster if everybody retrenches at the same time--has stepped into the breach. Again, that makes sense in a crisis. But once the panic has passed, the U.S. will simply be steering toward another, even bigger, crisis unless it finds something to replace debt as its No. 1 export.
Of course, less money borrowed means less money to spend. "Can you imagine McCain or Obama going around saying he wants to reduce your standard of living?" asks Murphy. Probably not. But maybe they could just sell it as, say, diversifying our product offering.
Extra Money To read Justin Fox's daily take on business and the economy, go to time.com/curiouscapitalist
I just got an email from my Congressman after he voted NO, AGAINST this "Bailout"
'Work Out' not Bailout
Every day in Washington people throw around the word “crisis,” but this week I’ve given it more weight than before. Last week, the Bush Administration requested $700 billion from Congress to bail out banks on Wall Street that held troubled mortgage-related assets. I am extremely concerned about the state of our economy, the status of our capital markets, and how the problems of Wall Street are being assumed by Main Street.
Every day in Washington people throw around the word “crisis,” but this week I’ve given it more weight than before. Last week, the Bush Administration requested $700 billion from Congress to bail out banks on Wall Street that held troubled mortgage-related assets. I am extremely concerned about the state of our economy, the status of our capital markets, and how the problems of Wall Street are being assumed by Main Street.
I remain skeptical of the Administration’s plan and am utterly unconvinced that this is the only alternative.
I have concerns about the ultimate cost to the Texas taxpayer. I am concerned that the federal government is becoming the lender and guarantor of last resort. I am concerned that the plan will put the taxpayer on the hook for a trillion dollars and still might not solve the problem. I am concerned that the plan could fundamentally change the role of government in the American free enterprise system. I am concerned with any taxpayer bailout for Wall Street that does not set strict limits for executive compensation. I am especially concerned for future generations who will have to pay to bail out Wall Street.
Fifth District residents have made it clear that they want a “work out,” not another bail out.
I am fighting for an alternative that reduces taxpayer exposure and does not reward the people who made bad decisions with other people’s money. We need to quell the panic and get some capital back into the market, but that capital ought to come from Wall Street, not the Texas taxpayer.
This problem on Wall Street can impact Main Street, but Wall Street has to pay for it.
This is a serious situation that needs to be resolved, so inaction is not an option, but it is always more important to do the right thing rather than the quick thing. The time has come for Congress to rationally debate alternatives – the consequences are too severe for us to rush to judgment, because we may have a taxpayer bankruptcy for the next generation.
It is essential to stop thinking only about today and start thinking about the next generation.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
They gave those new space suits a real workout this weekend...
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-09/28/content_10124582.htm
FD: LOTS of Video of the flight:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-09/27/content_10123068.htm
China's first spacewalk attracts world attention
www.chinaview.cn 2008-09-28 00:11:45
Print
BEIJING, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- Chinese taikonauts completed the country's first spacewalk Saturday, a feat that immediately became the focus of attention around the world.
Vladimir Soloviev, flight control director of the Russian space mission control center and a former cosmonaut who also performed spacewalks, called on Russia and China to enhance cooperation and share their experiences in space exploration.
"A spacewalk faces a series of complicated technological difficulties. China's first spacewalk contributes a lot to the country's space technology and is also a great achievement for the whole world," he said.
China is a country with growing industrial strength, a booming economy and great scientific potential, which have made it necessary for China and Russia to join hands in space exploration, the cosmonaut added.
Karl Bergquist, an expert with the European Space Agency (ESA),said the Chinese taikonauts' performance looked very impressive.
"I have just seen the first Chinese extra-vehicular activity (EVA) on the website of Xinhua, It looks very impressive. The Chinese astronauts have done a nice job. I am really happy for China," Bergquist said.
"The success of China's first EVA means now China has finished two challenging tasks during this mission and will of course push forward the development of China's space industries," he added.
British media also closely followed China's first spacewalk.
The Times online carried a story with the headline "China celebrates its first spacewalk," calling it "the latest milestone in an ambitious program."
A story in The Telegraph, headlined "China carries out first spacewalk," said "the main purpose of the flight was to prepare the technical skills, including the docking of two orbiters together, necessary for the development of a Chinese space station."
"The mission was also considered an essential step towards a manned mission to the moon," it added.
The Guardian said "Zhai Zhigang today became the first Chinese person to walk in space, marking the highlight of his country's third manned mission."
"The maneuver is a step towards China's long-term goal of assembling a space laboratory and station," said the newspaper.
French daily Le Monde said on its website that the successful spacewalk indicates China has become a member of "the club of the world's space powers."
A story in Japan's Kyodo news agency said the 20-minute spacewalk was a historic step in China's space program.
The ability to carry out spacewalks is essential for the success of future Chinese space missions, aimed at building an orbiting space laboratory and space station, it added.
The Shenzhou-7 spacecraft, carrying three taikonauts, was launched Thursday night from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China.
On Saturday afternoon, taikonaut Zhai Zhigang floated out of Shenzhou-7, accomplishing China's first attempt at extra-vehicular activity in space.
Editor: Yan
FD: LOTS of Video of the flight:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-09/27/content_10123068.htm
China's first spacewalk attracts world attention
www.chinaview.cn 2008-09-28 00:11:45
BEIJING, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- Chinese taikonauts completed the country's first spacewalk Saturday, a feat that immediately became the focus of attention around the world.
Vladimir Soloviev, flight control director of the Russian space mission control center and a former cosmonaut who also performed spacewalks, called on Russia and China to enhance cooperation and share their experiences in space exploration.
"A spacewalk faces a series of complicated technological difficulties. China's first spacewalk contributes a lot to the country's space technology and is also a great achievement for the whole world," he said.
China is a country with growing industrial strength, a booming economy and great scientific potential, which have made it necessary for China and Russia to join hands in space exploration, the cosmonaut added.
Karl Bergquist, an expert with the European Space Agency (ESA),said the Chinese taikonauts' performance looked very impressive.
"I have just seen the first Chinese extra-vehicular activity (EVA) on the website of Xinhua, It looks very impressive. The Chinese astronauts have done a nice job. I am really happy for China," Bergquist said.
"The success of China's first EVA means now China has finished two challenging tasks during this mission and will of course push forward the development of China's space industries," he added.
British media also closely followed China's first spacewalk.
The Times online carried a story with the headline "China celebrates its first spacewalk," calling it "the latest milestone in an ambitious program."
A story in The Telegraph, headlined "China carries out first spacewalk," said "the main purpose of the flight was to prepare the technical skills, including the docking of two orbiters together, necessary for the development of a Chinese space station."
"The mission was also considered an essential step towards a manned mission to the moon," it added.
The Guardian said "Zhai Zhigang today became the first Chinese person to walk in space, marking the highlight of his country's third manned mission."
"The maneuver is a step towards China's long-term goal of assembling a space laboratory and station," said the newspaper.
French daily Le Monde said on its website that the successful spacewalk indicates China has become a member of "the club of the world's space powers."
A story in Japan's Kyodo news agency said the 20-minute spacewalk was a historic step in China's space program.
The ability to carry out spacewalks is essential for the success of future Chinese space missions, aimed at building an orbiting space laboratory and space station, it added.
The Shenzhou-7 spacecraft, carrying three taikonauts, was launched Thursday night from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China.
On Saturday afternoon, taikonaut Zhai Zhigang floated out of Shenzhou-7, accomplishing China's first attempt at extra-vehicular activity in space.
Editor: Yan
NASA Agency faces crucial decisions about its future
New missions envisioned, but resources limited
By MARK CARREAUCopyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Sept. 28, 2008, 9:18AM
Video and interactives courtesy The Associated Press, the White House and NASA.
After a fabled half century that featured the Apollo moon landings, spectacular images from the Hubble Space Telescope, and a space station, NASA faces a challenging new course as it commemorates its 50th anniversary this week.
And that direction, guided by a new president and Congress, takes different paths that could send the agency:•Reaching beyond the Apollo landings to establish a manned lunar base, a goal outlined by President Bush four years ago.
•Bypassing a moon base to press ahead with a mission to Mars, a planet that may have once nurtured some life forms.
•Extending the life of the space shuttle fleet past its 2010 currentretirement date. Both John McCain and Barack Obama have urged the White House and Congress to keep all options open for the shuttle.
•Settling into the international space station, the largest man-made object ever assembled in orbit, much longer than the Bush administration's planned departure date in 2015.
•Going out of existence, allowing the private sector to make the next strides in space exploration.Those are just some of the thoughts circulating through the minds of policymakers, scientists and former astronauts who admire the $17.3 billion-a-year space agency.
Better use for the money?The rest, and there are many, would prefer that NASA's funding instead help address the nation's growing economic ills.
"The situation looks dire to me," said Neal Lane , the White House science adviser to President Clinton who now assesses science and technology matters at Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.
Forged in the Cold War, NASA opened its doors 50 years ago this Wednesday. The agency was organized to respond to the Soviet Union, which had grabbed a worrisome lead in space exploration. Within 11 years of NASA's creation, the Soviets had wilted in a sprint to the moon.
Shuttle nearing endNASA starts its second half century poised for new triumphs: Bush's lunar initiative, the first stop on a pathway to Mars and more distant destinations. But it faces significant obstacles.
The shuttle, after 123 missions punctuated by a pair of in-flight explosions that killed 14 astronauts, will lift off for the final time in late 2010 unless the next president and Congress agree on an extension.
The fate of an underfunded replacement, the Orion moonship and a pair of Ares rocket launchers, rests with the new president and Congress as well.
At best, NASA faces a five-year gap between the last shuttle mission and the inaugural launching of the next spaceship.
During the hiatus, which some experts believe is likely to grow, NASA planned to buy seats on Russian vessels flying to the station. But many lawmakers seem hesitant to approve legislation enabling the payments, given Russia's recent invasion of neighboring Georgia.
So, the choices NASA faces include going to the next president and Congress for an additional $3 billion a year to keep the shuttle flying, cutting back on popular, unmanned science missions or draining funds from the development of the new spaceship.
Lane and others believe NASA's future political footing depends on more than human spaceflight.
And they believe it should build on the global partnerships that NASA established over the last 25 years with Europe, Japan, Canada and Russia to construct the space station.
"Some people are really excited about human spaceflight and some of them about science," said Lane, who supports Bush's lunar initiative but questions its urgency. "Balance is important. If (NASA) becomes a go-back-to-the-moon program, then you really have to have a good answer as to why, and that question has not been answered."
President Bush charted NASA on a course back to the moon in response to those who investigated the Columbia tragedy and concluded the agency lacked the goals worthy of the expense and risk of spaceflight.
His directive called on NASA to ground the shuttle and return to the moon by 2020. By retiring the shuttle and shuttering the space station five years later, NASA would free funds for Constellation, the program for the Orion crew ship, the Ares I and V launchers and a lunar lander.
Some see urgency in the lunar project. It's an echo of the Cold War, they believe, but this time their attention is focused on China's unsettling rise as a potential rival to the U.S. in military and space power.
Chinese gearing upLast week, the formative Chinese space program planned to launch its third orbital mission in five years. The flight was expected to include the country's first spacewalk.
NASA administrator Michael Griffin has warned Congress that China could reach the moon ahead of an America unsure of its future course.
Beijing is between five and 20 years from reaching the moon with astronauts, according to James Lewis, who tracks China's space efforts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"We don't want to underestimate the political effect of being a leader in space," Lewis said. "It's a symbol of America's power."
Others view NASA's plans to trump a lunar landing by staffing a permanent moon base as more than a symbolic projection of influence.
"We go back to the moon for a very different reason than we did before. When we went to the moon in the 1960s, it was primarily to show we could do it before the Russians did it," said Paul Spudis, a lunar scientist who served on the President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond, an advisory panel formed in 2004 to advise the White House on space exploration.
"Fundamentally, the new mission is different," he said. "This time, it's to learn how to live and work on another world, how to extract resources."
Under the Bush initiative, NASA would establish a base near the moon's south or north pole. The sites under study rest on the rims of ancient impact craters, places where the sunlight is near constant and close to ice deposits left by comets that slammed into the moon.
Far from the Apollo landing sites of the early '70s, a polar base would enable a new generation of explorers to use some of the electricity generated by sunlight to convert ice into its chemical components, oxygen and hydrogen, as well as into drinking water.
Oxygen would fortify the breathing air, and oxygen and hydrogen could be used to fuel a transcontinental railroad between Earth and the moon.
"New missions will tell us if this is possible or not. If it is, it will fundamentally alter the calculus of spaceflight," Spudis said. "Right now, everything that we take into space, we have to lift up from the surface of the Earth. But we know there are materials and energy in space, not just on the moon, but on asteroids and other bodies. The question is, can you use what you find in space to create a new spacefaring capability? That is what we are trying to do."
But plans for a lunar base threaten to bog down achieving the more compelling goal of exploring Mars, which shares so many similarities with Earth it could be settled by humans, according to other experts.
Earlier this year, a gathering of space experts at Stanford University vowed to press the next president to reassess the Bush initiative, convinced that the expense of a moon base will siphon the resources for a more inspiring mission to Mars.
Mars mission beckons"Push will come to shove. The country is not awash in surplus money," said Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, one of those who organized the invitation-only Stanford gathering of academics, aerospace executives and former astronauts.
"It's Mars that pulls us as a species to space," he said, "to wonder about the origin and evolution of life in the universe, whether we can live on other worlds.
"Mars is the only place we can reach where those questions get addressed."
After more than a decade at NASA that included participation in the Apollo 9 mission, former astronaut Rusty Schweickart founded the Association of Space Explorers, a professional group that counts 320 space travelers from more than 30 countries. He now chairs the association's Near Earth Objects Committee, a panel working with the United Nations to address the global threat posed by future asteroid impacts.
It's a threat NASA or some other federal agency should address, according to Schweickart. The task would include identifying the asteroids that pose a collision threat and developing robotic spacecraft that intercept and alter their course.
"We certainly need a space program as much as we ever did. But what you do with it is a different issue," Schweickart said.
"NASA to some extent has acted as if it's in an ivory tower," he said. "It does very interesting and imaginative things. But it's been largely independent of what anybody sees as a public need."
mark.carreau@chron.com
By MARK CARREAUCopyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Sept. 28, 2008, 9:18AM
Video and interactives courtesy The Associated Press, the White House and NASA.
After a fabled half century that featured the Apollo moon landings, spectacular images from the Hubble Space Telescope, and a space station, NASA faces a challenging new course as it commemorates its 50th anniversary this week.
And that direction, guided by a new president and Congress, takes different paths that could send the agency:•Reaching beyond the Apollo landings to establish a manned lunar base, a goal outlined by President Bush four years ago.
•Bypassing a moon base to press ahead with a mission to Mars, a planet that may have once nurtured some life forms.
•Extending the life of the space shuttle fleet past its 2010 currentretirement date. Both John McCain and Barack Obama have urged the White House and Congress to keep all options open for the shuttle.
•Settling into the international space station, the largest man-made object ever assembled in orbit, much longer than the Bush administration's planned departure date in 2015.
•Going out of existence, allowing the private sector to make the next strides in space exploration.Those are just some of the thoughts circulating through the minds of policymakers, scientists and former astronauts who admire the $17.3 billion-a-year space agency.
Better use for the money?The rest, and there are many, would prefer that NASA's funding instead help address the nation's growing economic ills.
"The situation looks dire to me," said Neal Lane , the White House science adviser to President Clinton who now assesses science and technology matters at Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.
Forged in the Cold War, NASA opened its doors 50 years ago this Wednesday. The agency was organized to respond to the Soviet Union, which had grabbed a worrisome lead in space exploration. Within 11 years of NASA's creation, the Soviets had wilted in a sprint to the moon.
Shuttle nearing endNASA starts its second half century poised for new triumphs: Bush's lunar initiative, the first stop on a pathway to Mars and more distant destinations. But it faces significant obstacles.
The shuttle, after 123 missions punctuated by a pair of in-flight explosions that killed 14 astronauts, will lift off for the final time in late 2010 unless the next president and Congress agree on an extension.
The fate of an underfunded replacement, the Orion moonship and a pair of Ares rocket launchers, rests with the new president and Congress as well.
At best, NASA faces a five-year gap between the last shuttle mission and the inaugural launching of the next spaceship.
During the hiatus, which some experts believe is likely to grow, NASA planned to buy seats on Russian vessels flying to the station. But many lawmakers seem hesitant to approve legislation enabling the payments, given Russia's recent invasion of neighboring Georgia.
So, the choices NASA faces include going to the next president and Congress for an additional $3 billion a year to keep the shuttle flying, cutting back on popular, unmanned science missions or draining funds from the development of the new spaceship.
Lane and others believe NASA's future political footing depends on more than human spaceflight.
And they believe it should build on the global partnerships that NASA established over the last 25 years with Europe, Japan, Canada and Russia to construct the space station.
"Some people are really excited about human spaceflight and some of them about science," said Lane, who supports Bush's lunar initiative but questions its urgency. "Balance is important. If (NASA) becomes a go-back-to-the-moon program, then you really have to have a good answer as to why, and that question has not been answered."
President Bush charted NASA on a course back to the moon in response to those who investigated the Columbia tragedy and concluded the agency lacked the goals worthy of the expense and risk of spaceflight.
His directive called on NASA to ground the shuttle and return to the moon by 2020. By retiring the shuttle and shuttering the space station five years later, NASA would free funds for Constellation, the program for the Orion crew ship, the Ares I and V launchers and a lunar lander.
Some see urgency in the lunar project. It's an echo of the Cold War, they believe, but this time their attention is focused on China's unsettling rise as a potential rival to the U.S. in military and space power.
Chinese gearing upLast week, the formative Chinese space program planned to launch its third orbital mission in five years. The flight was expected to include the country's first spacewalk.
NASA administrator Michael Griffin has warned Congress that China could reach the moon ahead of an America unsure of its future course.
Beijing is between five and 20 years from reaching the moon with astronauts, according to James Lewis, who tracks China's space efforts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"We don't want to underestimate the political effect of being a leader in space," Lewis said. "It's a symbol of America's power."
Others view NASA's plans to trump a lunar landing by staffing a permanent moon base as more than a symbolic projection of influence.
"We go back to the moon for a very different reason than we did before. When we went to the moon in the 1960s, it was primarily to show we could do it before the Russians did it," said Paul Spudis, a lunar scientist who served on the President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond, an advisory panel formed in 2004 to advise the White House on space exploration.
"Fundamentally, the new mission is different," he said. "This time, it's to learn how to live and work on another world, how to extract resources."
Under the Bush initiative, NASA would establish a base near the moon's south or north pole. The sites under study rest on the rims of ancient impact craters, places where the sunlight is near constant and close to ice deposits left by comets that slammed into the moon.
Far from the Apollo landing sites of the early '70s, a polar base would enable a new generation of explorers to use some of the electricity generated by sunlight to convert ice into its chemical components, oxygen and hydrogen, as well as into drinking water.
Oxygen would fortify the breathing air, and oxygen and hydrogen could be used to fuel a transcontinental railroad between Earth and the moon.
"New missions will tell us if this is possible or not. If it is, it will fundamentally alter the calculus of spaceflight," Spudis said. "Right now, everything that we take into space, we have to lift up from the surface of the Earth. But we know there are materials and energy in space, not just on the moon, but on asteroids and other bodies. The question is, can you use what you find in space to create a new spacefaring capability? That is what we are trying to do."
But plans for a lunar base threaten to bog down achieving the more compelling goal of exploring Mars, which shares so many similarities with Earth it could be settled by humans, according to other experts.
Earlier this year, a gathering of space experts at Stanford University vowed to press the next president to reassess the Bush initiative, convinced that the expense of a moon base will siphon the resources for a more inspiring mission to Mars.
Mars mission beckons"Push will come to shove. The country is not awash in surplus money," said Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, one of those who organized the invitation-only Stanford gathering of academics, aerospace executives and former astronauts.
"It's Mars that pulls us as a species to space," he said, "to wonder about the origin and evolution of life in the universe, whether we can live on other worlds.
"Mars is the only place we can reach where those questions get addressed."
After more than a decade at NASA that included participation in the Apollo 9 mission, former astronaut Rusty Schweickart founded the Association of Space Explorers, a professional group that counts 320 space travelers from more than 30 countries. He now chairs the association's Near Earth Objects Committee, a panel working with the United Nations to address the global threat posed by future asteroid impacts.
It's a threat NASA or some other federal agency should address, according to Schweickart. The task would include identifying the asteroids that pose a collision threat and developing robotic spacecraft that intercept and alter their course.
"We certainly need a space program as much as we ever did. But what you do with it is a different issue," Schweickart said.
"NASA to some extent has acted as if it's in an ivory tower," he said. "It does very interesting and imaginative things. But it's been largely independent of what anybody sees as a public need."
mark.carreau@chron.com
At 78, First Man on the Moon, speaks about the future of NASA
Transcript of a speech by Neil Armstrong, made at NASA's 50th anniversary celebration, hosted by the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC
"In the summer of 1958, the Congress wrote and the President signed the National Space Act establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and I remember the time clearly, 50 years ago this week. I was high above the California desert piloting a B-29 carrier aircraft and launching the X-1E, the latest and most advanced of the fabled X-1 research airplane series.
NASA became an operating agency on October 1st, 1958. I found myself that Wednesday morning going to work at my same job, my same office, doing the same work that I'd been doing the previous day. It was a relatively easy transition. We were already riding on rockets and research aircraft. We already knew how to count backwards: "8, 7, 6, 5..."
We had merely to paint over the "C" in NACA and replace it with an "S" on our airplanes, our trucks and vans, as the other principal components of the new agency, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the California Institute of Technology, and the Army's Redstone Arsenal in Hunstville, Alabama, assumed they were deciding what the minimum amount of painting would be required at their installations and what new responsibilities they would face.
In any case, I suspect there are some number of people here tonight who remember the birth of NASA and were a part of those early days. So I would like to ask those here tonight who were founding members of NASA, those from NACA, those from JPL, those from Redstone, and those who came from various other places to join NASA in the year 1958 – I'd like those of you who are seated in that category to stand, and those of you who are standing to raise your hands and let me hear from you. Congratulations! You've being recognized as old fogies – old fogies that we are and of which we are exceedingly proud.
And here tonight, a half century later, we look back on what has been accomplished. Our knowledge of the universe around us has increased a thousand fold and more. We learned that Homo sapiens was not forever imprisoned by the gravitational field of Earth. Performance, efficiency, reliability and safety of aircraft have improved remarkably. We've sent probes throughout the solar system and beyond. We've seen deeply into our universe and looked backward nearly to the beginning of time.
We were a competitor in perhaps the greatest peacetime competition of all time: the space race – USA versus USSR. Like a war, it was expensive. Like a war, each side wanted intelligence on what the other side was doing. And I'll not assert that the space race was a diversion which prevented a war. Nevertheless, it was a diversion. It was intense. It did allow both sides to take the high road with the objectives of science and learning and exploration.
Eventually, it provided a mechanism for engendering cooperation between adversaries and then since, among others. It was an exceptional national investment for each side. I submit that one of the most important roles of government is to inspire and motivate its citizens, and particularly its young citizens – to love, to learn, to strive to participate in and contribute to societal progress. By that measure, NASA will without doubt rank in the top tier of government enterprises."
The goal is far more than just going faster and higher and further. Our goal – indeed our responsibility – is to develop new options for future generations: options in expanding human knowledge, exploration, human settlements and resource development, outside in the universe around us.
Our highest and most important hope is that the human race will improve its intelligence, its character, and its wisdom, so that we'll be able to properly evaluate and choose among those options, and the many others we will encounter in the years ahead. And I look forward to watching the progress and those exciting development and hearing the status report when we gather again for NASA's 100th anniversary."
"In the summer of 1958, the Congress wrote and the President signed the National Space Act establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and I remember the time clearly, 50 years ago this week. I was high above the California desert piloting a B-29 carrier aircraft and launching the X-1E, the latest and most advanced of the fabled X-1 research airplane series.
NASA became an operating agency on October 1st, 1958. I found myself that Wednesday morning going to work at my same job, my same office, doing the same work that I'd been doing the previous day. It was a relatively easy transition. We were already riding on rockets and research aircraft. We already knew how to count backwards: "8, 7, 6, 5..."
We had merely to paint over the "C" in NACA and replace it with an "S" on our airplanes, our trucks and vans, as the other principal components of the new agency, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the California Institute of Technology, and the Army's Redstone Arsenal in Hunstville, Alabama, assumed they were deciding what the minimum amount of painting would be required at their installations and what new responsibilities they would face.
In any case, I suspect there are some number of people here tonight who remember the birth of NASA and were a part of those early days. So I would like to ask those here tonight who were founding members of NASA, those from NACA, those from JPL, those from Redstone, and those who came from various other places to join NASA in the year 1958 – I'd like those of you who are seated in that category to stand, and those of you who are standing to raise your hands and let me hear from you. Congratulations! You've being recognized as old fogies – old fogies that we are and of which we are exceedingly proud.
And here tonight, a half century later, we look back on what has been accomplished. Our knowledge of the universe around us has increased a thousand fold and more. We learned that Homo sapiens was not forever imprisoned by the gravitational field of Earth. Performance, efficiency, reliability and safety of aircraft have improved remarkably. We've sent probes throughout the solar system and beyond. We've seen deeply into our universe and looked backward nearly to the beginning of time.
We were a competitor in perhaps the greatest peacetime competition of all time: the space race – USA versus USSR. Like a war, it was expensive. Like a war, each side wanted intelligence on what the other side was doing. And I'll not assert that the space race was a diversion which prevented a war. Nevertheless, it was a diversion. It was intense. It did allow both sides to take the high road with the objectives of science and learning and exploration.
Eventually, it provided a mechanism for engendering cooperation between adversaries and then since, among others. It was an exceptional national investment for each side. I submit that one of the most important roles of government is to inspire and motivate its citizens, and particularly its young citizens – to love, to learn, to strive to participate in and contribute to societal progress. By that measure, NASA will without doubt rank in the top tier of government enterprises."
The goal is far more than just going faster and higher and further. Our goal – indeed our responsibility – is to develop new options for future generations: options in expanding human knowledge, exploration, human settlements and resource development, outside in the universe around us.
Our highest and most important hope is that the human race will improve its intelligence, its character, and its wisdom, so that we'll be able to properly evaluate and choose among those options, and the many others we will encounter in the years ahead. And I look forward to watching the progress and those exciting development and hearing the status report when we gather again for NASA's 100th anniversary."
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